Suchergebnisse

Public policy is produced by elected and unelected officials and through the interactions of branches of government. We consider how such interactions affect policy implementation and representation. We argue that legislators try to influence bureaucratic decisions through direct communication with federal agencies, and that such contact is effective and has consequences for policy outcomes. We provide empirical evidence of this argument using original data about direct communication between members of Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) along with decisions made by the DOL regarding trade and redistributive policies. We find that direct contacts influence DOL decisions, and the agency is more likely to reverse previous decisions when requested to do so by legislators. Our results challenge key assumptions and findings in the previous literature and have important implications for interbranch relations and informal means of control over the implementation of national policy.

This study evaluates the impact of women state legislators on state abortion policies. Two dimensions of state abortion policy were identified and it was found that women state legislators, once they reach a critical mass within the legislature, can affect state policies on regulations concerning parental notification of abortions, but not public funding. But women legislators, and especially women Democratic legislators, can affect state abortion policies in other ways that are less well understood. Through an analysis of post- Webster abortion bills it was found that women representatives secure committee assignments that allow them to block pro-life legislation. This is especially pronounced in states with few women legislators and states most likely (according to other studies) to support policies restricting choice.

Reviews Noel Annan's, Our age: a portrait of a generation. (SJK)